The first in a three-part series in IEEE Annals, this article gives a historical explanation of the endemic confusion surrounding the stored-program concept. The authors suggest the adoption of more precisely defined alternatives to capture specific aspects of the new approach to computing associated with the 1945 work of von Neumann and his collaborators. The second article, "Engineering--The Mir...
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Computing in Transition: The Origins of Barcelona's School of Informatics, 1976-1984

This article analyses the establishment of the first computer science university degrees in Catalonia in 1976 in a context of political transition to democracy in Spain. Based on an oral history project and the examination of the school's archives, the authors show that the development of Barcelona' School of Informatics was the result of policymaking a powerful association of informatics technici...
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Nomad, a major 4th generation language, was designed and implemented by National CSS, a principal time-sharing company in the 1970s. The author, one of the team members who developed Nomad, provides the background of the company and describes their use of Ramis as a significant contributor to the company's revenue. After Mathematica's decision to change the price of Ramis, the decision was made to...
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Commercial electronic distribution of software (EDS) originated in the second half of the 1970s. By the early 1980s, several North American and European companies were already distributing software using common communications networks. However, it would take two more decades before EDS would become the foremost software delivery model. This article charts the development of the early commercial ED...
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In the early 1960s, the time-sharing computer at the System Development Corporation had several messaging commands through which remotely logged in users communicated with one another and with the system operator. These commands were used for system operation and for sending information to remote users. They also permitted collaborative work such as joint debugging of multi-author programs, an act...
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Steve Furber has made major contributions to both the processor architecture and neural networks fields. He was one of the developers of the Acorn RISC Machine microprocessor, which was the basis for the ARM processors that are now so common in cell phones. He also developed the SpiNNaker system that greatly expanded the power of neural networks. For these contributions, he received the 2013 IEEE ...
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